Odd World

[Juliabam]

the horrible image of what that toungue would look like when it comes out, completely covered by the stuff.

"Look, ma, if you don't help me out right now, I'm going to

fart...

[freswith]

"For heavens sake, Honey, don't do that; you know the spacecraft can only hold an overpressure of one atmosphere!" cried his increasingly desperate mother. "Have you tried hitting the Robot emergency reboot button located on

[underwhere]

the inside left front circuit board underneath the robot's right eye? If memory serves me correctly, it connects directly to the robot's asshole, so if you need a shortcut way to get at it, that would be the best way to get to it. Of course, if you go that route, you'd need to shove your arm all the way up in there, and in that case, you might very well miss the reset button, but thats not my problem if you do. Oh, look at that! My 14th snack of the day has arrived. Bye bye, and good luck!"

[freswith]

The captain was close to despair. He looked at the fuming robot, and said "Oh dear, you've got a spot of rust under your right eye, let me remove it for you!" The robot, being intensely conceited, as all robots are, stood rock still as the captain reached to the spot under its right eye and deftly pressed the reset button. The robot shuddered, all the lights went off, came on again, and then began to flash slowly.

It said "

[underwhere]

BIOS Version A.14

Now testing RAM, 16 terabytes: Test failed

Rebooting"

"Now what?????" the captain said on the verge on insanity.

"HORTENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" he shouted at the top of his longues.

[freswith]

"Yeah, skipper?" came the reply as Hortense entered, stomping on his/her/its pegleg, "Make it quick - the frog and I are busy choosing our wedding dresses."

"Dresses?" replied the Captain.momentarily nonplussed, "Which of you is the bride?"

"Both of us." replied Hortense, "It's the best role, after all. Will you perform the service?"

The Captain goggled, and eventually summoned the willpower to reply, "

[underwhere]

You want me to do what? Isn't that the usual job of that stupid robot, to perform inter-species marriages?"

"Are you sure it is wise to call a robot stupid, Captain?" Hortense asked. "The last time I did that,

[freswith]

the brutes gathered round me singing off-key Chinese madrigals until my mind went all runny."

"Why did you call him stupid?"

"He'd just performed my third sex-change operation and he'd got it all wrong and I didn't know if I was coming or going."

"Your third...."

"Its' a girl's right to change her mind."

"Do you know a robot who can fix my arm?"

"Well, there's the one who did my sex-change operation, but

[underwhere]

he had a heart attack and now lives in a wooden box. Last time somebody went knocking, he didn't answer."

The captain had had just about enough of this. Returning to the situation at hand, he said, "Look,. if you don't find a way to fix my arm to its original milspec criteria, and if you don't find a way to get this stupid robot working again, I have an electric saw I am going to use on your wooden leg!"

Hortense glared at the captain before saying,

[freswith]

"Now there's no need to be like that! Try treating the robot as though it's human. They do respond!"

The Captain sighed. This was going to be difficult. He looked at the robot, forced a smile, and said "Hello Mr Robot, I'm the Captain. What's your name?"

The Robot looked up at the Captain, and replied softly. "Hello Captain. My name is Marvin. Just Marvin. And I really don't like the idea of being human, because they're

[underwhere]

.....what is the word? In binary, we just say 0100101001010010100111111101010001010101011100101."

The captain took a moment to compute the meaning of Marvin's words. All he could muster, however, was a segmentation fault followed by a core dump. Then, he realised why.

"Marvin, what is the nature of your computing hardware? I just tried to compute that word, and because my hardware and software is different from yours, I wasn't able to make sense of it."

"Captain, unlike you,

[freswith]

I have a broadband link direct to the great programmer in the sky. I worship him and he looks after me."

"That's very handy. I'm the Unified Church of Titipu myself. How about you Marvin?"

"I just want you to know that I'm very depressed. Here am I with a brain the size of a planet and a terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side, and all you can do is

[underwhere]

make fun of my religion? And you want me to fix your stupid arm? Here," he said emphatically, grabbing the captains other arm and tearing it right off. "Find somebody else to fix it, you ungrateful

[freswith]

m*th*rf*ck*ng sonofabitch!"

"Good heavens! do you really know my mother, then? You should have said!" replied the Captain, greatly relieved, "How long have you known her?"

"About forty years." replied Marvin, temporarilly nonplussed. "I used to lodge there at one time."

"You were the lodger? THAT Marvin?" said the Captain excitedly.

"Well there wasn't anyone else of that name staying there."

"DADDY!" cried the Captain, " At last I've found you!"

Marvin looked closely at his son and said "

[curiositykilledthecat]

"I despise your every breath"

Marvin's son, not withstanding his thought at robo-reproduction stated....

[freswith]

"Dad, I've got an important letter for you, it's in my jacket pocket. I've been carrying it with me for years." Ever curious, Marvin took it out and started to open it. The Captan continued: "It's a paternity suit and Writ for Maintenance, plus interest, duly served." Marvin froze. he realised the Captain would have all his bank details on the salary system, so there was no escape. "You can start by replacing my arms."

The robot nodded reluctantly. It was a fair cop. He replaced the Captain's arms. Tiredly, he said; "

[underwhere]

The Unified Church of Titipu tells me that penance is required for me to make up what I have done to you, but I'm not sure I ever can, and in any event, I never understood the process of forgiveness all that well. Will it suffice for me to offer a simple apology to you, or is there a much more elaborate method of penance required?"

"I wouldn't know," the captain replied. "I haven't been to church in

[freswith]

diapers since I was a baby."

The Captain thought for a moment, in which time Marvin had solved all outstanding mathematical problems, discovered the square root of minus one, and perfected cold fusion.

"Since we're a bit shorthanded, would you like to be a bridesmaid to Hortense, or possibly the frog?"

Marvin was completely taken aback, and replied, "

[underwhere]

I wouldn't be a bridesmaid for Hortense or the frog, even if my life depended on it."

"Why not?" the captain inquired.

":Do you have any idea what happened the last time I was a brides maid?" Marvin shouted. "Everybody kept telling me incessantly that I was too

[pampers212]

well dressed to be a bridesmaid, and I was naked. Naked! Regardless, just for once I want to be the Bride."

The captain was momentarily taken aback by Marvins transparency. Not to mention the thougth of Marvin as a bride was a little . . .

[underwhere]

antidisestablishmentarianistic. Why should everybody do everything just because Marvin wanted them to? Who was Marvin to make such a demand on the captain?

The more the captain thought about it, the more upset he became. Finally, he could take it no more. He went over to Marvin, picked Marvin up, turned Marvin upside down, and piledrived his head into the floor.

"You may be my father," the captain said, "but I am not your son anymore, you

[freswith]

spoilt arrogant heap of recycled bean tins!"

Marvin lay still for a long time, his lights flashing erraticly. Hortense came to look at him, and found a strange sense of sympathy for the battered mechanism before him. He/she/it rolled Marvin over and sat him up, not knowing why he/she/it did so, or if it would do any good. He cradled the robot in his arms and spoke softly to him, and by and by the flashing lights became more orderly in their action, and Marvin's cooling fans slowed down. Hortense continued to comfort the machine, and talked to him about children, the difficulties of bringing them up, and their ungratefulness. The red glow returned to his eyes, and eventually the mouth-speaker crackled and slowly and thickly he began to speak. "

[underwhere]

Why didn't I ask her to get an abortion?"

"And if you had," Hortense inquired softly, "how would that have helped matters?"

Marvin frowned. The lights on the outside of his body had ceased blinking now, but he was fairly certain he would need to get himself repaired. Some of the electrical signals which should be going through his body seemed very weak.

Marvin said, "How have I helped matters anyway? You see what I brought into this world, Hortense? All I tried to do was raise a good kid, who I had to leave not of my own choosing many years ago. There is nothing I can do now to fix my family."

"Thats not quite true," said Hortense, with a wide grin on his/her/its face. "You could

[Bonsai]

always bet that this is nothing but a dream. Usually, when you stop to function or get very close to it, the dream ends. Here, with this venom vial the result will be fast and sure. If you win the bet, you enjoy the result; if you loose, you don't have an aftermath to deal with."

Marvin looked at him, skeptically: "This is not like you... My bet is that the content of the vial is not venom and you just wish to see how desperate I am. If I accept the vial, you can demonstrate that I have a logic malfunction and get me locked up in a Mind Institute to be reformatted."

"Why you have those paranoid thoghts on me? I'm here to help!" Hortense replied in a slightly offended tone, surprised by the robot's reaction.

[underwhere]

"And besides," Hortense continued, somehow with a second vial in his other hand which Marvin had no idea where it came from, "I'll drink this one with you, if you choose to take me up on it. Using your eyes and computing power, I know you can work out chemically what is in these vials. In any event, both of us will either be living the good life, or we'll both be gone."

Hortense waited patiently for a response, his slightly offended but otherwise affectless poker face unmoving.

Marvin wasn't sure what to do. The more he thought of it, the more maddening this became. Hortense's appetite was legendary, after all. He had been known to tolerate digesting things no sane person or machine would ever get near. He didn't doubt that Hortense could tolerate whatever was in the vials also, but his eyes and CPU were too weak to properly discern what was in them

Marvin reached out with one of his arms, grabbed one of the vials, and